Thompson Makes `Sense' Out of Script

BRONWEN HRUSKA, CHRONICLE CORRESPONDENT

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, December 10, 1995

1995-12-10 04:00:00 PDT New York -- In her most aristocratic deadpan, Emma Thompson is apologizing for being under the weather. "Pardon my phlegm," says the Oscar-winning actress. It's this mixture of her cultured English style and a heaping dose of mockery and self-deprecation that has made Thompson, 36, a darling of American audiences over the past few years.

That combination shines through in her newest film, "Sense and Sensibility," opening Wednesday. The Jane Austen adaptation, in which she stars with Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman and Kate Winslet, marks Thompson's screen-writing debut. She plays Elinor, the eldest Dashwood sister, who puts aside her own desires as she tries to take care of her family after her father dies.

Producer Lindsay Doran had been looking for a writer for 10 years when she saw some of Thompson's skits on the BBC and persuaded her to try her hand at Austen. Thompson agreed to write the script, but first she had one small movie she'd already committed to: "Howards End." She won an Oscar for that 1992 role as Margaret Schlegel.

During the five years and 14 drafts (three of them in longhand) it took Thompson to whip Austen's classic novel into a tight, snappy and, most of all, funny, screenplay, she became a huge movie star, racking up half a dozen prominent roles, including two more Oscar nominations in 1993 for "The Remains of the Day" and "In the Name of the Father."

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"When Sydney Pollack and I went to studios to try to put the script in development," says Doran, "people said, 'The writer's an actress? Does she have to be in it?' No one knew who she was. We literally went from 'Does she have to be in it?' to 'If she's not in it we're not making it.' "

And in fact, says Thompson, furrowing her expressive brow, Elinor's character is not unlike her own. "Elinor wasn't a character like Carrington," says Thompson, referring to her latest role, as Dora Carrington, an androgynous and iconoclastic painter who carries on a love affair with a gay writer. "Carrington was a wild and strange person to me. But Elinor was someone who lived by the rules. As Elinor, I made a great effort to make everyone laugh all the time, but I do that anyway."

Her close relationship with her own younger sister, Sophie, fed nicely into her onscreen bond with Winslet, who plays the lovesick and passionate Marianne.

"My father died when I was 22," says Thompson. "I had that feeling: As the eldest I had to cope. I wanted to help run things." Her voice suddenly becomes larger than life, as if she's onstage and playing an authority figure. "I've got to take over," she bellows, then returns to her measured and pleasant conversational voice. "I understand that part of Elinor very well."

Winslet ("Heavenly Creatures") says she found herself instantly at ease with Thompson, who "mucked up" with the rest of the cast and crew during the filming of the $15 million movie.

"She's just Em. She's fun, supportive and passionate. She gives great hugs, too," says Winslet. "We'd tuck each other up into bed at night, and say, 'Sleep tight, see you in the morning' -- we were really like sisters."

Director Ang Lee ("The Wedding Banquet") says Thompson made the movie accessible by her intimate knowledge of the subject. "She is so English, and meanwhile she's making jokes about her culture. That attitude was very helpful," says Lee. "She has an interesting ability to be very dry and warm at the same time."

The reason Austen plays well to contemporary audiences, says Thompson, is because she was such a good study of people. "Austen's characters are still sharp as a pin. They're all human beings we recognize today. We have psycho-babble now for all the things people do in those books -- Elinor is either in denial, co-dependent or repressing her emotions. Marianne is an idealist who is projecting."

Perhaps the journals Thompson keeps on her movie sets are a form of self-therapy, noting the events of the day combined with her own emotional ups and downs. Mirabella magazine printed excerpts from her "Sense" journal: "28th April, 1995. Nice easy scene this A.M. but I feel unattractive and talentless. I look like a horse with a permed fringe."

Although these snippets of her personal life give the illusion of openness, Thompson is a deeply private person. When the conversation turns to the gossip columnists who have reported her breakup with Kenneth Branagh, her husband and co-star in "Henry IV," "Dead Again," "Peter's Friends" and "Much Ado About Nothing," she stiffens and her voice becomes stern.

"I don't read the gossip," she says. "It's uncomfortable. I will no longer answer those kinds of questions about my personal life. I think it's extremely rude. I would not dream of asking someone I didn't know about their personal life, and I expect the same respect."

Respect she has -- from anyone who's read "Sense and Sensibility" lately. "I knew she could write," says actor and novelist Stephen Fry, who was a Cambridge University classmate. "But I was staggered by the quality of her screenplay. It's a beast of a novel. There's an unwieldy structure, but her script had an ease of storytelling."

Fry may have been surprised by her script, but he wasn't in the least surprised by her Hollywood success. "From the first moment you see her on stage you never for a moment questioned she'd get an Oscar," says Fry, who performed in Cambridge's Footlights Revue with Thompson and Hugh Laurie (who plays the riotously dour Mr. Palmer in "Sense").

She co-produced, directed and performed with Cambridge's first all-woman revue, "Woman's Hour," in 1980 before winning her own BBC series in 1988 called "Thompson."

Thompson says she learned a great deal from the comedic duo of Fry and Laurie, who went on to star in the "Masterpiece Theatre" series "Jeeves and Wooster."

"The formative years in our 20s were spent trying to make each other laugh. Can you imagine a better training?" says Thompson, who claims she wanted to be Lily Tomlin when she grew up.

"I'm sure we were all simply revolting at university -- completely arrogant and full of ourselves. I think we've all had the s-- knocked out of us a bit by now, I hope."

Though she says she will finally take a break after "Sense and Sensibility," Thompson is gearing up to write an original screenplay. "I've got some ideas bubbling. But whatever it is, there will be lots of women in it," she says, adding that one of her favorite women's roles this year was Nicole Kidman's malevolently vain vixen in "To Die For."

Those original roles, she says, are few and far between for women. "The roles I really hate are where you have to say, 'You mustn't be brave and go out and save the world because I need you here at home,' " she says. "Those are the type of archetypal female roles that drive me to distraction."

'SENSE AND SENSIBILITY'

The film opens Wednesday at the Metro in San Francisco, the Shattuck in Berkeley, the Regency in San Rafael and other Bay Area theaters.